Goodbye C Language! bzip2 Officially Transitions from C to Rust

You read that right, the aging compression algorithm—bzip2, which still exists in countless software dependency trees, has officially embraced Rust.

In the latest release of bzip2 crate 0.6.0, it no longer calls the C library by default, but instead fully utilizes the Rust-implemented libbz2-rs-sys. This means: faster performance, simpler cross-compilation, stronger compatibility, and enhanced safety.

🔧 Why bother with this old algorithm?

Although you may not have actively used .bz2 files for years, it still must exist in many underlying libraries and protocol specifications. In other words—some dependency you are using has likely “secretly” utilized it.

This version of the Rust implementation is based on the author’s team’s experience in the zlib-rs project, undergoing a comprehensive modernization rewrite while retaining C interface compatibility through FFI. If you are using a C project, it can also be used as a standalone dynamic library.

🚀 Performance improvements are not just talk:

In compression tasks, the Rust implementation is about 10-15% faster than the native C version. For example:

  • silesia-small.tar (level 1): The C version took 3.43G CPU cycles, while Rust only used 3.00G, an improvement of 14.3%;

  • Compression of the sample3.ref test sample improved by nearly 15%.

In terms of decompression, the Rust implementation also consistently leads, with improvements ranging from 4% to 10%—except for occasional fluctuations on macOS (the team also admits that measuring performance on macOS is quite challenging).

🛠 How developer-friendly is it?

  • 🧩 No need to deal with C compilation chains and cross-platform differences

  • 🕹️ Compiling for WebAssembly, Android, Windows, etc., is straightforward

  • 🧪 Supports MIRI testing, making it easy to check the memory safety of unsafe parts

  • 🛡️ Security audit passed, with only one off-by-one logic bug found, which has been fixed

More importantly: C symbols are no longer exported by default, fundamentally avoiding dependency conflicts and making Rust projects cleaner.

✨ Conclusion:

You may not even need to know that it has become faster, but it indeed is. And you may never have to suffer from some obscure C compilation error again.

bzip2 is not outdated; it has just quietly become better.

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